8.20.2012

Let the Lakers Pursue their Superstars

The Lakers have positioned themselves to essentially
surrender Andrew Bynum for Dwight Howard in a four-team deal. Bynum will now do
his handicap parking in Philadelphia. And Howard has already told the Lakers he
will sign a five-year contract extension next summer, standing to make more
money while playing out this year."That's what makes this even more
exciting and why I said what I did," said Magic, who had a chat with
Howard a couple of weeks ago. "We now will have our superstar when Kobe is
gone. This is what the Lakers are."

Get Wilt Chamberlain, today still arguably the best center
of all-time, and, even if he isn't #1, his lingering star power will always
keep him in the conversation. Wilt netted the purple one title in the storybook
1971-72 season when Los Angeles won 69 games. Wilt subsequently got old, and
moved on to volleyball (or was it boxing?).

The Lakers' response?

Add Kareem-Abdul Jabbar, another pivot man who has a
legitimate claim to being the best ever, along with his own amount of star
power. The immediate impact on the Lakers' success was minimal. Kareem won a
couple of MVPs in the 1970s, but it wasn't until the Lakers added another
superstar, Magic Johnson, that their balloon really took off. Shortly
thereafter they added James Worthy, who was pretty damn close to a third
superstar (Michael Jordan lite?). The Lake Show added five more titles during
the 1980s. The purple got old and weary yet again, and we all know what
happened this time. Jerry West (another Laker superstar) spotted Kobe Bryant,
and then did everything in his power to land him. Soon thereafter came Shaquille O’Neal,
and the rest was history.

For the most part, the Boston Celtics have not adopted the
"superstar" approach to building NBA teams. Larry Bird had superstar cache. Beyond that and prior to
2008, I'm not sure what other Celtic was legitimately a superstar. Bill Walton
and Tiny Archibald were both past their primes when they joined the green.
Ditto for Pete Maravich. Bill Russell and Dave Cowens both won MVPs. Does
winning that award alone catapult you into superstar status? I say no.

Part of
being a superstar is scoring points by the boatload. Another part of it is
walking the walk. Neither Cowens nor Russell were media celebrities the way
Chamberlain, Jabbar, Magic, Kobe, and Shaq were. On the one hand, Bird was an
ordinary Joe who shoveled his own snow, mowed his own grass, and drank generic
beer to save money. On the other hand, Bird also did commercials, talked trash,
did his share of boasting, and enjoyed a cult-like following among NBA fans
around the world. So like it or not, Larry, you were a superstar.

Where I'm headed with all this is that from the 1960s
through the 1980s, the Lakers-Celtics match-ups were billed as glitz versus hardhats.
The blue-collar Celtics against Showtime from Hollywood. I bought into this back
then. The more I think about it, however, I like Magic's point better. The
Lakers are about building teams around superstars, while the Celtics are about building
teams.

The 2007-08 Celtics had three stars, but were all three of
them "superstars"? Surely, all three will one day hang their jerseys
in the Hall of Fame. Ray Allen and Paul Pierce have scored gobs of points. Both
had periods in their careers where they carried their teams deep into the
playoffs. So stars they were. Still, I'm not sure either one was a superstar in
the way Bird, Magic, Wilt, or Kareem were. KG is another matter, as the
Ticket's star power clearly rises above and beyond all but the brightest stars
of today and yesterday.

I submit that this is where things get interesting for the
Celtics, at least for the purposes of this post.

Even though the lights shined bright on Pierce, Garnett, and
Allen during the championship season, Doc Rivers made sure that the season was
not about individuals, but instead about team. "Ubuntu" was the
concept he relied on to infuse the players with idea of sacrificing individual
accomplishments for the better of the team. If you've been a Celtics fan for a
while, can you think of a better word to describe the franchise across its
entire history?

The 1960s teams were centered on Bill Russell, but every
player had a role that contributed to their consistent success, and many of
those so-called "role players" are today sitting in the Hall of Fame.
Was KC Jones a superstar? Sam Jones? Bob Cousy was undoubtedly a superstar. But the
Cousy-led Celtics were not built around Cousy in the same way the Lakers' teams
have been built around Kareem, Shaq, and Kobe. Cousy's star shined bright despite playing team oriented ball, and, perhaps because the Celtics were playing team oriented ball.

Dave Cowens was the heart and soul of the 1970s championship
teams, but those teams were not centered on Cowens. Jo Jo White, Charlie Scott,
Paul Silas, Paul Westphal, Don Cheney, John Havlicek, and Don Nelson all made
significant contributions. Larry Bird stood head-and-shoulders above the entire
league for much of the 1980s, but how far would the Celtics have gone without Tiny,
the Chief, DJ, Walton, Cornbread, Danny, Wedman, Sichting, and even Gerald
Henderson?

So where does this leave us?

I don't think there is one path, and one path only, to an
NBA championship. Florida Celts Fan recently made a similar point in observing
that the 2004 Piston championship team was lacking a superstar, unless you think
Rasheed Wallace qualifies. I don't, because his stats don't rise to the
superstar level, and that team relied more on the Ubuntu concept than it did on
Rasheed Wallace for its success.

Every Celtics’ coach from Red to Tommy to KC and Doc made
sure that the Celtics' best players subordinated their sizeable egos for the
betterment of the team. 2008 might be the latest example, but it certainly is
not the only one. It will be up to Doc once again this year to figure out a way
to make a team of pretty good players into a team that can compete for a
championship against other teams filled with "superstars." Other than
Red, I'm not sure who else I would trust to do this (a thought echoed by Florida Celts Fan Recently.

And if you absolutely believe that a team needs a superstar
to win an NBA championship, what about Old Number9?

7 comments:

Excellent post. Celtics have always been about team. Red's approach from the beginning was to give each player a role and they filled those roles to the tune of 11 championships in 13 years. We can add that the Celtics have never had a scoring champion. I'll take team over superstar and a bunch of followers. Or even a couple of superstars and a bunch of followers.